Equal Pay Amendment Bill

I move, That the Equal Pay Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Government and Administration Committee to consider the bill. This bill was developed by my colleague Catherine Delahunty. It was developed after a meeting we both attended, sharing New Zealand research that showed an increasing gender pay imbalance for students in the first 5 years of graduating.

When Catherine Delahunty launched this bill in 2011, some people said the difference in men’s and women’s pay was not a result of discrimination, and that her bill—this bill—was unnecessary. Then the Employers and Manufacturers Association boss, Alasdair Thompson, made our case for us, saying: “Look at who takes the most sick leave. Women do, in general. Why? Because once a month they have sick problems. Not all women, but some do. They have children that they have to take time off to go home and take leave of. I don’t like saying this because it sounds like I’m a sexist, but it’s a fact of life.” This was great proof that bias and discrimination are alive and well, at least in some parts of our business community.

With this evidence and the overwhelming anger of many New Zealanders, in June 2011 the Government said it would take a look at this bill. It then won the election in November, and the rest—more accurately described, I think, as “subtle dismantling of rights”—is history.

This bill will not deliver pay equality for women by itself, but it is an important step forward rather than backwards in this struggle, which has been fought for far too long. This bill provides transparency so that women can find out if they are being paid less than male colleagues for the same work. It provides a prompt for employers to consider whether there may be unconscious bias in their pay decisions. It will also provide much more accurate information for us to track the causes of the gender pay differential. In all reality and truth, this is a very small bill, and what it does is very simple. But, nevertheless, these simple interventions could be a game-changer for at least some women.

This bill sits within the continuum of efforts for gender pay equality that started with the suffragettes. After women won suffrage, in 1893, equal pay was next on their political agenda, and that work is still continuing today. Women are still fighting, 124 years later, to get paid the same as their male colleagues. The Equal Pay Act 1972 and the Human Rights Act 1993 made it very clear that it is illegal in this country to discriminate on the basis of gender. We have a strong legal commitment to paying the job, not the gender. And yet, 45 years on from the Equal Pay Act, women’s average hourly earnings are still 13.6 percent less than men’s, and that is 22.9 percent for Māori women and 28.4 percent for Pasifika women.

In the 1990s, we did make some progress in righting that imbalance, but since that time the inequality has become entrenched, and that is not because we have reached the point that we cannot do anything more; it is because we have stopped doing anything much at all. The way the gender pay imbalance has been tracking, it will take until at least 2062—2062—before women finally get equal pay. It is predicted that we will be able to colonise the moon by 2022. I have got to say, I do not think that equal pay should be harder than colonising the moon. So enough already, eh? I think it is time Parliament got proactive on this. This bill will not, by itself, fix the imbalance and achieve gender equality in Aotearoa. But we do know by now—thanks to Kristine Bartlett and the unions—that our Equal Pay Act can also be used to deliver equal pay for work of equal value, a major contributor to the imbalance.

This is the next obvious area for action: addressing conscious and unconscious bias. Research commissioned by the Ministry for Women and published this year found that traditionally understood factors, such as education, occupation, industry, or part-time work, accounted for only 20 percent of the pay imbalance. Eighty percent of wage inequality is caused by differences in behaviour between men and women, as well as either conscious or unconscious bias that negatively affects women’s opportunities for recruitment and wage advancement.

Other research analysing productivity and pay rates in private firms found that the difference in men’s and women’s pay cannot be justified. Recent Australian research counters the myth that women just need to learn to negotiate. It found that women are willing to negotiate for pay, but it is just that men are more likely to get the pay increase at the end of the negotiation.

Yes, there are other factors to this problem, but there is plenty of evidence of conscious or unconscious bias in employment pay offers and progression. It is not always the Alasdair Thompson - type sexism; it can also just be good people not having a prompt to reflect or second-guess their instinct. I have got an example from my own experience here, within my team, where a man with less experience was offered pay two grades higher than a woman with significantly more experience. We found this out only because we have a very close unionised team who share information. The people making the decision, when challenged, were upset that anyone would suggest they were biased, but they dropped his pay offer to be equivalent to hers.

They are good people. I know they were not intending to discriminate, but the reality is that we are all affected by these biases. They exist in our society, and they will come out in this situation. How much better would it be to have a system that prompted reflection ahead of time, that built us that check in to our decision making? Discrimination is illegal, but it is pretty hard to find out whether you are being paid less for doing the same job, especially as it is quite normal for contracts to prohibit or discourage discussing pay and salaries. It should not be by accident that women find out they are being paid less. How can we stamp out discrimination when the only people who are able to identify it are those who are doing the discriminating?

The Ministry for Women, on its website, tells employers to “Be transparent. Have clear targets, measurements, and reporting—this is critical to building an effective gender diversity plan.” This is Government advice, and that is what this bill does; it provides the simplest possible framework to achieve the Government’s advice. A lot of companies are doing this, and they are finding that it pays off in terms of lower turnover and happier staff. This has not overburdened their businesses; it has helped their businesses.

This bill requires employers to add gender to the payroll data that they are already required to collect, and to send it in to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment once a year, along with the particulars of all equal pay determinations. It enables employees to access the information in gender-aggregated form. I fail to see how that could be excessive. I hope that everyone in this House will put the interests of women first, tonight, to move us forward instead of backwards in this journey towards equal pay. Thank you.

The dilemma of equal pay is not isolated to New Zealand; it is a global issue, and absolutely one that does need to be addressed. There is no denying the significance of this issue and how very real the fact is that bias and perceptions about women in the workforce are a key factor in driving the gender pay gap.

The Equal Pay Amendment Bill does have merit, and the Government is sympathetic to the aims of the bill. However, we do not agree that the proposed changes set out by the member Jan Logie, who has put this bill forward, will effectively mitigate the issue of pay inequality, and therefore we cannot support this bill going through the House.

Pay equity is the principle that women and men should receive the same remuneration for doing jobs that are different but of equal value. This is distinct from equal pay, which is the same pay for doing the same job. Pay equity issues can stem from an undervaluation of work predominantly performed by women over time. The bill put forward by the Opposition proposes changes that would require employers to provide gender pay gap information to employees on request so that they may be able to identify potential discrimination. However, this is only part of the issue. The differences could also reflect legitimate, non-discriminatory factors, such that remuneration and time records do not record. Gender is not the sole issue in consideration when determining remuneration points.

The bill also poses major privacy risks. As the Opposition has always been against any form of potential privacy breaches, if a business owner in charge of a small business with only half a dozen employees starts passing out this information, then the personal identification of particular employees in this business is likely to be at risk. It does not actually take very much to work out who that employee might be. It could breach the most basic of privacy codes.

Thirdly, the bill proposes an independent reviewer to consider and advise how to mitigate these risks, but the bill resolutely fails to make clear how the reviewer would be appointed, the extent to which they could use this data, and what they could do with it. These are greater risks in themselves. How many independent reviewers would you need to conduct this sort of review in each and every business? If you just think about the businesses up and down the country, it would take quite a lot of work to be reviewing them.

Again, this bill has no limit on the use of the information that is collected. Where does commercial confidentiality fit within this bill’s directive? Nowhere in this bill does it explicitly state that a reviewer, employer, or employee could not disclose the information. So that is unethical. The bane of the small businesses that I come across every week in this country is the complexity and cost of compliance. This bill, if it were to proceed, would be another layer of red tape. People do not mind complying with worthwhile issues, but the administrative nightmares that happen and accompany layer after layer of bureaucracy are what people get turned off by in the first instance. It is purely administrative. Further administrative costs are signalled where the bill requires employers to send wage, time, and gender records for each employee to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for publication. This sort of data is already being collected.

To be frank, this bill seems nice on the outside, it is wrapped up in a pretty bow, but when you actually get into it, under the surface, there are a lot of fishhooks. There is no refined detail. The process is not well-thought-out in places to ensure that a fair and equitable process would result. The bill is out of touch, and it is late to the play, because the Government has already made legislative changes in initiatives that go towards addressing some of the contributors to the gender pay gap. Without question, this issue cannot be solved overnight. But this Government is actively working to ensure it is being progressed in the appropriate manner. It is this Government that is delivering tangible solutions that are being felt by women in workforces right across New Zealand.

This Government is leading the work to reduce the gender pay gap in the public sector, and it is encouraging employers to address this issue in the private sector. We are not hiding the gender pay gap, and we are not pretending it does not exist. The State Services Commission recently introduced the annual publication of gender pay statistics for all Public Service departments. The publication of statistics like these enhances transparency and helps us figure out where we need to be looking next in order to mitigate the situation. Yes, the statistics are not the best; in fact, some of them are galling. However, the State Services Commission is intent on providing the right information, in a timely manner, to all agencies to help them understand and address the drivers of the gender pay gap, in order to mitigate and reduce the effects of it.

New Zealand has an absolute rock star of a Minister for Women in our Deputy Prime Minister, Paula Bennett. Our Minister is an advocate for women. Every day, she is out there encouraging, supporting, and endorsing women. She takes this portfolio—and recognises its upmost importance—into all of her other portfolios, including State services and police. The Government introduced legislative changes, including extending the right to request flexible working arrangements to all employees and reducing barriers to employment for women looking for a greater work-life balance. This actually does not apply to just women; it applies to men just as well.

We also introduced the “Keeping in Touch” provision to paid parental leave, for parents taking this leave. This increases women’s access to career development opportunities. The Government is also updating the Equal Pay Act to ensure it is better equipped to provide guidance to pay-equity claims and can provide a practical and fair process for employees to follow if they feel they are not being paid what their job is worth due to gender discrimination. Exposure of the draft of the Employment (Pay Equity and Equal Pay) Bill has been released for public consultation to ensure that the wording in the legislation is clear and workable for employers and employees. Consultation closes tomorrow, on Thursday, 11 May. So legislation will be planned to be introduced.

The Government set up a joint working party on pay equity last year, made up of representatives from unions and business, to come up with a process and set out a set of principles for resolving pay equity. The pay equity bill is a step towards closing the gender pay gap and ensuring that the female-dominated industries are paid fairly. It reflects this Government’s commitment to working for New Zealanders. The Ministry for Women has commissioned research on the causes for the gap for women, which is assisting the ministry to understand the potential further actions it needs to take to reduce the pay gap for women on different incomes. Research found that 80 percent of the gender pay gap is unexplained. This shows that factors such as differences in behaviours and choices between men and women are driving the majority of trends in the current national gender pay gap.

The Ministry for Women monitors the Government’s target of 45 percent women’s representation on State sector boards and committees, and Minister Bennett has announced that the Government met the target in December 2016.

While given this platform, I want to acknowledge, out there in rural and provincial New Zealand, the women who are working on farms. I would like to acknowledge Hayley Hoogendyk, who as recently as last weekend was the first woman to take out the “farm manager of the year” at the Dairy Industry Awards. She is 28 years old and she manages a 600-cow property. She is breaking down barriers, and she is breaking through ceilings. The reason I give you that message is that we need to study where these women are coming from and what they are doing to bridge the gap, so that we can actually help all women do it and so that it is targeted and focused. I clearly oppose the introduction of this bill. Thank you.

I wonder if we ought to get the member who has just resumed her seat, Barbara Kuriger, a glass of water so she can swallow that very difficult dead rat she has just had to swallow on behalf of the Government. I was not going to expect anything less than that because—let me give you a little history lesson with regards to the National Party and its record on supporting pay equity. In 1990, when the fourth Labour Government passed the Employment Equity Act, what was one of the first things the incoming National Government did? It scrapped it. What else did it do? Not long after Labour established the Department of Labour’s pay and employment equity unit, the National Government came in and it disestablished that. Not only that, but it repurposed the money that was given to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

If this member across the Chamber is talking about the Government’s record in terms of gender and pay equity, I have to say to Mrs Kuriger that I am sadly disappointed. I actually rate her as a member. I think she is very talented and very competent, and I would think that she would be the type of member who would stand up for issues related to women and gender equity. So I apologise on behalf of your Government for you having to swallow the dead rat that you have just had to swallow. I want to commend my colleague and friend Jan Logie, because this is a great piece of legislation. It is small but perfectly formed, and what it does is it talks about adding transparency to the process.

That is what it talks about—just adding some transparency to the process. So we can say to those good employers who actually pay the women in their organisations exactly what they pay the men: “Good on you. Ka pai. That is exactly what you should be doing.” And for those others who do not do it—look to their example. It is not that hard. All you need to do is tick a box, send it into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and lo and behold you have complied. It is really easy. How hard is it to change a mindset? It is about showing some leadership and that is what this bill does—it shows some leadership and adds transparency.

I am really disappointed in that member who has just resumed her seat because I know that she is very engaged in parliamentary processes that look at raising gender representation for women. I have to say I am a proud member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s women arm, the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians. Why I raise that is because our tenet is twofold—it is to raise gender representation and it is to mainstream the issues that impact on women. As women parliamentarians, each and every one of us has got a responsibility to stand in this House and say that when there are pieces of legislation that impact on us, we have got to get behind them 110 percent, and we have to bring our male counterparts with us. I have to say that in our party that is exactly what we are doing. We are saying that this is a great bill. It actually says that we are taking some leadership and we are demonstrating to the companies and the businesses of New Zealand that this is how you do it. I am really disappointed that that member and her Government have taken the stand that they have.

The other thing I want to mention about this piece of legislation is that if, actually, as a Parliament or as a Government or as the executive, we took the view that we could put our legislation through a gender lens, this bill would actually top the list. In terms of supporting the issues of women, this bill actually meets the mark. If we looked at budgeting in terms of a gender lens, this bill goes a long way to supporting women to actually have the economic empowerment that they deserve. We are not going to do anything in this country about reducing the rates of violence or around ensuring that women actually get the fair deal that they deserve until we look at their economic empowerment, and that is what this piece of legislation is saying. It is saying that as a Government we can take some leadership, we can actually put our policies through some lenses, we can say to business: “All you need to do is actually be transparent and open with the people of New Zealand, and we will celebrate you for doing so.”

We are coming up to supporting breast cancer awareness week and all the issues that our women need to be arguing for in this Parliament, and I have to say I am so disappointed—I am absolutely, really disappointed—in this Government for its stance on this.

I stand to take a short call on the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, put up by the member Jan Logie. I think that when we start looking at things like this where we are looking for transparency to reduce gender discrimination, and we are asking employers to tick boxes, we do not see how wide this thing could actually impact and the risk that it puts women under when an employer is made to tick a box as to the pay equity within their business. It is not one of those types of things that you can put to employers to make them do without any comeback—without any comeback—from the employer to actually find a way to not do that. And what does that mean? It puts at risk some women’s positions in their jobs.

If you want to have an example of equal pay for equal work, let us have a look at a job as a shearer. A lot of people look at that job as a shearer and they think: “Ugh! It is a dirty stink job.” But it pays well—it pays well to shearers. A woman shearer gets paid exactly the same amount per sheep as a man shearer. They do equal work for equal pay. A woman who works in a shearing gang as a rousie or a woolhandler gets the same as their male counterpart. So when you start to look at positions like that, you will find that, yes, women come and go; but they come and go under the understanding that they will get exactly the same as their male counterparts will get.

I think my colleague Barbara Kuriger’s speech was a very good one because she pointed out a number of things that this Government has done towards reducing that gap between male and female pay, but especially around pay equity, which is currently being looked at at the moment. I think that when you start to look at things like that—and I understand that when the member put the bill in, all the work that the Government had been doing around pay equity most probably had not come to the fore, but it has come to the fore now. It is a little bit like this particular bill has come forward and a lot of things have happened prior to it, and that is why I think it looks a little bit outdated.

I am not saying to the member: “Your bill’s so far out there it’s a waste of space.” It is not. I think that what the member may need to do is go back, look at all of the legislation that has gone through to do with women and pay equity, and equity of women, and start to develop a more solid bill around those things rather than put this particular bill forward—something that is out of date. It is one of those bills that many of us women on this side sit and look at and think: “Yes, well there could be a lot of work done to actually make this bill a strong bill that actually resonates with the current things that are happening within this side of the House and the legislation that is going through.”

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: You’re lucky no one’s watching this, Jo.

Oh no, I know that there are people, because they text me and they go “What a fabulous speech you made.”, and I go: “Thank you so much.”

💬 Simon O’Connor: He’s mansplaining, anyway.

He is mansplaining. I do not know what mansplaining is, but anyway—although I commend the member for putting forward the bill, I do encourage her to please look at the work that has been done. Let us get some harmonisation with the bills that are there and the work that the Government is doing and let us see whether we can do all of this for womanhood together.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: I thought you said it was going to be a short call.

As I wind up my contribution—my short contribution—I just want to say that, yes, I am sympathetic towards what the member is trying to put together, but at the moment I cannot support the bill. But I thank her anyway. So thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support this bill to select committee, and I do so with the full support of every single member of my caucus, which is three women and nine men. I do so because—let us be clear—I have seen this once before from the National Party. I remember Hone Harawira’s feed the children bill, when the National Party members sent out the women—sent out the women—and it sent out the Māori women particularly, to argue down why we should do something very simple and very easily done, and with absolutely no cost, to support New Zealanders. I have seen this before.

I would not be surprised—I am going to put $2 on it that Melissa Lee takes the next call. I am going to put $2 on it. I am going to put $2 on the fact that Simon O’Connor may take a call at some stage to explain why the men of the National Party caucus do not believe that women need pay equity, do not believe why business—business, which asks for transparency in every single contract that it has. Business, which wants to make sure that it has an equal playing field with anybody else in this country, is going to deny that to the women in New Zealand. And, I have got to say, what a ridiculous move politically, when 52 percent of the voting public are women—not smart, guys. I do not know who is running your campaign—possibly Mr Joyce is still running your campaign—but, boy, are you off the mark.

For the benefit of the last two National Party contributors, let us be clear: these are two more little boxes, saying “Male” and “Female”, that are added to a form of all this information that already goes to the Ministry of Business, Information and Employment every year. It is not a new form, Ms Kuriger. It is not more red tape. Your Government put in place this red tape. All that Jan Logie is asking for is two more little boxes and one tick. Crikey dick, ladies, let us get with it.

The other thing about this is that one cannot deny, and the Government members stood up and said—and, actually, that was really interesting from Ms Hayes. She stood up and said: “This bill is outdated because this Government has done this and this and this and this for pay equity.” The gap is getting bigger. The gap between men with children and women with children is 17 percent—17 percent between men with children and women with children. Then, when you get down to men without children and women without children, we get to 5 percent, so in the middle we have got an average—right? So it is there—we know it is there.

What did this Government do? After a series of court cases where it was forced by a woman to actually front this issue, it finally did some changes. It finally did some legislation. What those members down the other side have done to try to avoid any more court cases with regard to the support staff in schools is they are trying to actually create some sort of approach of “Well, you can negotiate and we’ll tell you how you can negotiate. But, really, it’s on you, ladies, to have a choice.”—and I say “ladies” knowing that that is a condescending phrase, because that is the way this Government treats women, right?

That is the way this Government treats women, to the point that it took away the budget from the Ministry for Women. The last Minister for Women was outside Cabinet, so she did not even have a seat at the table, and members of this Government rant on about boards being 48 percent women—good on you! We are actually talking about the women who are doing the cleaning. We are talking about the women who are working in our rest homes. We are talking about the women who are now electrical apprentices, like my niece. I want to make sure that when she is qualified, she will get the same as any man.

I want to create an environment where, if an employer is paying a woman less, they can explain why. But without the evidence, how do we make them explain why? It is not that hard.

The National Government has sent the women out and thrown them under the bus. Shame on you, National, for doing that to your women MPs, and I am so sorry that that is the party you are part of, ladies.

I understand the member Tracey Martin has made a wager that a man is not prepared to take a call, but she will just have to make do with me on this occasion. In making a brief contribution on this Equal Pay Amendment Bill, can I begin by congratulating you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is wonderful to see you back here in this House.

The Equal Pay Amendment Bill, in the name of Jan Logie, amending the Equal Pay Act (EPA) 1972, is something that is worthy of this House’s consideration. I congratulate the member on bringing it here, and I know that her intentions in advancing this are absolutely genuine. I have got the pleasure of working with the member on the cross-party parliamentary rainbow network. I have genuinely enjoyed that opportunity to engage on issues, including those of the transgender community. That is one of the aspects that does trouble me a little bit about this bill, in that it requires employers to gather and collate the information pertaining to the gender of their employees.

This is an issue that we have discussed in the parliamentary cross-party rainbow network because I had concerns about a proposal that came to the group that this information on gender identity be gathered in census format, as well. The reason I have a concern about that—and I appreciate that it can be done with the very worthy motivation of trying to understand the problems faced by that community and devise social policies that can help people. But I also have a concern about the State, employers, or anybody gathering information that can be incredibly sensitive to the people involved. It may be information that they do not share publicly widely beyond themselves, sometimes, or maybe only with their immediate family or their very closest friends. So I do have a concern about requiring employers, on one hand, to be completely gender-neutral—and I agree that they should be when they are making their employment decisions—but also telling them they will have to inquire as to their employees’ gender. Frankly, I do find that a little bit concerning.

This Government has a proud record on advancing gender equity issues, and I would point to the recent achievement of 45 percent of appointees to Government boards being women. This is a measure that has been achieved by the very proactive approach of senior Ministers, and I have seen this myself in their approach to appointing board applicants. They make sure that if candidates are of equal merit, a woman applicant is appointed in order to lead to greater gender equity. We know that in the workplace and at the board level, greater input and decision-making by senior women leaders leads to better decisions and better outcomes on those boards.

So this is a Government that is in the process of updating existing Equal Pay Act legislation and amending the Employment Relations Act to implement a number of recommendations on pay equity, with the goal of providing fair but also practical processes for women, men, and those of any gender in our workforce, particularly those who feel they are not being paid what they are worth for the job they are doing, where that feeling is due to gender discrimination. So I think we should not jump the gun on this. We should follow the process that this Government has, sensibly, been engaging in, and this comes on top of a number of other initiatives that have been announced by Ministers over the last 8½ years of this very good, very sound, very sensible National Government.

Turning to some of the other provisions of this bill, increasing the maximum penalty for a breach of the EPA to align with the penalties under the Employment Relations Act—again, this is something on which I sympathise with the member’s intention. I believe she is trying to add real teeth, and the message does need to get through to employers that it is absolutely unacceptable to discriminate on the grounds of gender, or, actually, of anything else, in my view. They should not be discriminating on race or sexuality or political preference. It should really come down to the ability of the person to do the job.

But I do think the bill is problematic, as some of the data that would be collated does not actually give a full and genuine picture. Basic earning rates, for instance, do not give a full and genuine picture of the amount of work being done, at what level, and of the equity of the comparative workloads. Thank you.

I am getting thoroughly sick of hearing Government members stand up in this House and tell us that they support the intent of a bill and then vote against it, because we actually have a system—this is breaking news for the members on the Government benches—in this Parliament that deals with exactly that. This is the first reading. At the first reading, it is our decision: do we agree with the broad intent of this bill? If the answer to that is yes—which I heard from Barbara Kuriger. She supports the intent of this bill.

💬 Hon Member: So does Jo Hayes.

I am not quite sure what Jo Hayes said—I never am—and Paul Foster-Bell, he told us that this was a bill worthy of Parliament’s consideration. Well, if it is worthy of Parliament’s consideration, vote for it at first reading and send it to a select committee so that we can consider all the issues that you have raised, so that we can listen to the officials, so that we can listen to the experts, and so that we can listen to—I am sure—the thousands of people who would want to come and submit on this bill. But the truth is—and the members opposite know it—they do not support equal pay. They do not support any moves to make our workplaces fairer for women. That is the truth of it, because if it was anything different, they would be voting for this legislation.

Barbara Kuriger told us that she is voting against this bill because it does not solve the pay gap. This bill will not solve the pay gap, so Barbara Kuriger is going to vote against it. Of course it does not solve the pay gap, but if we applied that test to everything that would make some step towards reducing the pay gap, we would not vote for anything. You would not have even gone into the pay equity settlement if you thought that that was not going—because it is not going to solve the pay gap. It is going to make a tiny, tiny dent in the pay gap, but it is a step in the right direction, which is why it was the right thing to do, and that is why voting for this legislation is the right thing to do.

So do not come to this House and tell us that you support the ideals behind this bill. You do not, because you are not voting for it. You do not support equal pay. You do not support better rights for women in the workplace, because if you did, you would be voting for this bill.

💬 Simon O’Connor: Why is he mansplaining this?

There is an old saying, and it is that—[Interruption] Si has. He has found a new word. He is a clever boy. He has found a new word, and he is throwing it around as much as he can. There is an old saying, which is that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that is what this bill seeks to do.

That is all this bill seeks to do. It is to collect some data so that we have a better idea of what is driving the pay gap, and so that we might be able to get employers and the people who are going through the employment process, who are interviewing candidates and who make the pay offers to successful candidates, to actually stop and think about some of those unconscious biases that do exist. It is simply a mechanism for getting us to stop and think about that—that is all—and, yes, it is part of the progress that we have to make towards closing the pay gap. It is not a difficult thing to do.

I found even more disingenuous than the approach that the National members are taking towards their vote on this bill for Paul Foster-Bell to come here and say that he is worried about privacy breaches if we were to collect information about what men get paid and what women get paid. This is from a Government that wants to collect the names and personal details of victims of sexual violence. Those members are saying that they are concerned about the potential privacy breaches of collecting information about what people get paid. Well, there is a word for that, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I do not want you to kick me out, so I am not going to say it. But we all know what it is, and we all know that that is what they are when they come to the House and make claims like that.

I have got 1 minute left and I just want to say this, because other members have mentioned pay equity. The pay equity settlement is the result of campaigning and work over a number of years by unionised workers. It has not come about from the largesse of the Government opposite. It was backed into a corner by a very savvy, very comprehensive union campaign that gave it no option but to settle, and I want to congratulate Kristine Bartlett and the unions involved in that pay equity settlement.

But do you know what? I want to see more—not the legislation that the Government is bringing to stop that happening in the future. I want to see more settlements that make sure that not just women but all working people get decent pay, get paid what they are worth—a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. That is what we stand for on this side of the House, and that is why we are voting for this bill. They don’t, they won’t, and they know it.

Mr Deputy Speaker, before I make my contribution on this bill, I would like to congratulate you and welcome you back to this wonderful House—lovely to see you smile. To the member Tracey Martin across the benches, you owe me $2, mate. Just in case you actually need proof of whether the member in front of me actually spoke ahead of me just to win the bet, I can show you the speaking list to confirm that Paul Foster-Bell’s name was, in fact, ordered in that way.

Just for some members who were actually wondering what mansplaining is, that speech from Iain Lees-Galloway was a perfect example of mansplaining. It is a man standing up and yelling and screaming and trying to tell women what to think. I just want to say that you do not have to yell and scream in this House. We do actually hear you and you make some points well, and I think we are all very passionate in this House.

I just want to congratulate Jan Logie on having her member’s bill drawn from the ballot. All of us put bills in the member’s ballot and, you know, whenever there is a ballot, we do wonder whether our bill is going to be drawn from the ballot or not. Some members are more lucky than others, and mine has been in there since God knows how long.

The issue of gender and pay is, in fact, an important one, as previous speakers have said, and how we actually view it and how we hope to address that issue—obviously, we have different ways. I believe it is actually an important issue that this House has to have a discussion on. I think it was Barbara Kuriger who said that bias and perception about women in the workplace is driving our gender pay gap, and it is important that we achieve good and fair outcomes for all employees. I would like to note that in the House, however, the Government is, in fact, doing something to address the issue, and I will come to that a little bit later on.

The member’s bill proposes changes to mandate employers to provide gender pay information to employees to help identify potential discrimination. On first look, this sounds like a good idea and reasonable, but, you know, as other members have actually said, there is a privacy risk, as wage data does not always give the full story. Wages can vary based on hours, time, and other important factors like experience when deriving one’s pay. Actually, we are now at the heart of Privacy Week. For those of you who did not know, there is in fact a Privacy Week—this week is actually the week of privacy.

The bill concerns the privacy of employees and the company that they work for, and that has to be noted. Privacy can be a particular problem in smaller businesses, where there is a small number of employees, and sometimes, you know, the pay differences could be identifiable. It may be the right thing to actually raise the issue, but the effect that it might have on other employees—it is not necessarily their fault that they are actually earning more than their counterparts, and the fact that they might actually get hatred from a fellow workmate could be something that might produce disharmony in a workplace and that can lead to an unproductive workplace. When you have few staff and when men and women are in similar roles, it is clear that the privacy of the minority would be impacted on and the identity of the higher earners would be identified, and that could be a problem.

I know that Barbara Kuriger talked about the administration costs, so I will not actually go into that. But I read a while ago—I mean, most of us actually hate the idea that women are getting paid less for the same work. I think we all agree on that factor.

The fact is that the Government has been promoting and trying to achieve good results on State sector boards, where I know people have mentioned the figure of 45 percent. That was achieved in December of 2016. It is really unfortunate that the NZX-listed companies do not have such good results—their boards are only 17 percent women—but the Government is working towards its own pay equity legislation. The exposure draft of the pay equity bill has actually been released for public consultation to ensure that the wording in the legislation is clear and workable for employers and employees. The consultation is closing tomorrow, in fact, and the legislation is planned to be introduced soon.

So I am looking forward to that piece of legislation, which has actually been consulted widely on. I believe that it will a strong step towards closing the gender pay gap and ensuring female-dominated industries get fair and reflective pay, supporting hard-working New Zealanders. Hence, I cannot support Jan’s bill.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure to rise in support of this Equal Pay Amendment Bill. I particularly want to pay tribute to Jan Logie and to Catherine Delahunty, and I want to say: you are a rock star, Jan. You are a true rock star—not someone else mentioned in the House earlier today.

I actually want to start with a quote from Dr Jackie Blue, who challenges our Minister for Women, who, she noted, has been vocal about information her ministry released earlier this year to support this bill to select committee. And what information was that? That was information that the Ministry for Women and Auckland University of Technology released that said 80 percent of the gender pay gap is due to both conscious and unconscious bias. And what does that mean? Bias—an inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair. We also noted from that piece of research that there are pay differentials between working mothers and fathers, of 17 percent, and the labour market gender pay gap is 12 percent.

So what is this bill going to do? It is going to create transparency in workplaces so that we all know which employers are not paying women as much as men. That is the hallelujah moment, everybody.

I am going to take a bit of a different slant on this legislation in terms of its relevance. I want to note the White Ribbon accreditation process in Australia. This is about workplaces that commit to eliminating family violence, essentially. What that programme does is it builds on existing gender equality and diversity programmes. So it is about strengthening a culture of respect and gender equality at all levels of the organisation. It is about responding to and preventing violence against women, supporting all employees to challenge inappropriate behaviour, and strengthening gender equality within the broader community. Because, guess what, everybody: family violence is preventable.

So this bill is directly relevant to family violence. If that Government is going to tell New Zealanders that it is committed to ending family violence and it has got a bill before the House, the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill—well, this piece of legislation is equally as relevant to that kaupapa. Family violence being preventable actually is about an ecological model of changing behaviour. So how do we change behaviour? We change behaviour by highlighting inequality or practices that are unfair to women. That is what this piece of legislation will do. And then it actually becomes a determinant of that workplace or the sector to want to address it. But how can you want to address it if it is not transparently out there, so that there is something we can do about it?

Accredited workplaces under the White Ribbon Workplace Accreditation Programme demonstrate effective leadership. They drive social change. They strengthen gender equality. And, in doing so, guess what? They help stop violence against women. I think, actually, employers and organisations such as Countdown are going to lead in this area as well. We saw earlier this week that Countdown has released a transgender policy. How awesome that Countdown, as an employer of 18,000 people, is going to take the step of having a transgender policy that is all about respect. It is all about people being supported in their transition. It is all about transparency and, fundamentally, it is about the rights of workers in the workplace.

I think Countdown and The Warehouse—because The Warehouse in Australia is a White Ribbon - accredited organisation—are actually going to show up this Government. The reality in this space is the Government is not showing the leadership, the Minister for Women is not showing the leadership, the Prime Minister is not showing the leadership, but corporate New Zealand is showing the leadership because, actually, it cares about its workers. That is fundamentally what this piece of legislation is about.

Do you care about the workers in your workplace? Do you want to help create a gender-equal society? Well, if you do—and if that National Government truly was committed to reducing family violence in the community, then it would support this bill, at minimum, to select committee. Let us have the discussion. Let us see where it fits. Let us show how committed we are to making sure that women and men are treated equally in New Zealand. I 100 percent support this bill. Kia ora.

I can assure you that my presentation will not be a testosterone-fuelled speech, for obvious reasons. This Government absolutely recognises the significance of this issue. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind about the bias and the perceptions about women in the workplace and how that is driving the gender pay gap. We do agree across this House about that and we do want to close that gender pay gap, but what we do differ on is how we get there. Although we are, as everyone has said, sympathetic to the aims of the bill, we do not agree on the proposed changes and the detail within the bill. I am not quite sure how long the bill has actually been in the ballot, but it may have been there for quite some time, because things have moved on, and there have been some significant changes made that, perhaps, make this bill obsolete.

The Government already has its initiatives and legislation in place, and they go well on the way to addressing some of the concerns that are already raised and are contributing to the gender pay gap. We have made legislation changes that will address some of the contributing factors. We are, in fact, in the process of making legislative changes to the Equal Pay Act and amending the Employment Relations Act 2000, and they will implement recommendations on pay equity, providing a practical and fair process for employees to follow. We are leading the work to reduce the gender pay gap in the public sector, and that is a massive piece of work with actual tangible results already.

One of the aspects of the bill that is causing quite a lot of concern is the impact it will have on employers and the need to provide additional administrative cost and effort by providing so much detail about employees: sending their wage, time, and gender records to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) for publication, when, already, Statistics New Zealand can provide that data. So the irony is that we are discussing that during Privacy Week, as my colleague Melissa Lee pointed out.

As you will all be aware, the Minister for Women is the Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon Paula Bennett; that is the regard in which we hold this portfolio. This Minister and her ministry have commissioned work on the causes of the gap for women, and that is helping the ministry to understand how we can implement further action. We know that 80 percent of the gap is unexplained—the research is telling us that, and it does shed light on the drivers of the gender pay gap. There are things such as the behaviours and choices between men and women, and the unconscious and conscious bias that drives the majority of those current gender pay gaps. The ministry is also running a project to profile 12 leading New Zealand companies working on gender-equity initiatives. There is no doubt—and the data is very clear on this—that boards of directors who have women perform better. There is no doubt.

So we are leading by example. The Ministry for Women monitors the Government’s own target of having 45 percent of women’s representation on State-owned boards and their committees. It was very pleasing that the Minister announced recently that the Government has already met its target. But we are not just paying lip service to it. We have made it a requirement of chief executives to report and plan for how they are going to address the gender pay gap, so when we do our annual reviews—and I was pleased to be a part of that this year—when the State enterprises come in for their annual reviews, we can actually asked the question about what they are doing and how successful they are at closing that gender pay gap and having women in executive roles on their boards.

But, I guess, for us, the demonstration of putting our money where our mouths are was the settlement that the Government recently announced—a $2 billion settlement—for some of the health sector’s lowest-paid employees, predominantly women, and those, of course, are the women in our healthcare and our disability rest home care. We are putting our money where our mouths are.

That was a pretty depressing display from that side of the House, I have got to say. We have heard a lot from the Government: that this bill is unnecessary; that this Government has got it sorted; and that Theresa Gattung, a huge number of women business leaders, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, Jackie Blue, the business and professional women’s organisation, the Graduate Women New Zealand, the National Council of Women, and the New Zealand Public Service Association have all just got it wrong for asking the Government to support this bill. The Government knows better than all of those business leaders and women in our communities!

The Government members are telling us that they have got it sorted because they are introducing pay equity legislation that is out for consultation at the moment. I think it is important to put on record in this House that that draft bill will actually make the case for equal pay for the same job a personal grievance issue. It will risk making it completely invisible in the entire system. They are actually restricting the right to strike for pay equity. They are restricting women’s access to information—women are able to get employers’ information for work of equal value only after they have established a case. Then they are adding extra criteria that women are going to have to prove and they are extending the comparator, overturning a court decision. And they are standing here in this House telling us that they give a toss about women’s economic equality. It is damn clear to me from their actions that they do not, and what they have been doing tonight is entirely consistent with that.

I hope that everyone in this House realises how frustrated women actually are. This has been a fight that has been going on for 124 years. It is time to step up with some solutions. Stop putting your fiscal bottom lines and your sense of what might be an “inconvenience” for an employer before the human rights of women in this country, because it is time for women to get economic equality, and that is going to take action.

Sure, there are some things that we could resolve in select committee in terms of gender diversity. I think that would be a great discussion to have in select committee. Sure, there is a question about whether the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment would provide guidance, to be able to add the detail around the independent assessors or whether that should be put in legislation. Sure, let us do that in select committee.

We have heard, though, that this is just an unbearable weight that businesses could not carry—that is what I have heard from this Government. Yet, somehow—I do not know—Norway, Sweden, and Finland all have similar provisions in their legislation for income transparency, and, strangely, those three countries are in the top four most equal countries between men and women’s incomes. Huh! I don’t know, maybe there is a connection there!

Then we are seeing, as well, that Government members are talking like this is impossible. I get a sense that it is ideological for them. But yet, in the UK, the Liberal Party has introduced a pay transparency system that will involve it from next year. It will be publicly ranking businesses.

💬 Catherine Delahunty: League tables.

League tables for businesses on gender pay equality. My bill is not going anywhere near that far. That is a Liberal Party in the UK that is going so much further than this does. It is doing it because it thought businesses would come to this point themselves, and then it realised that they will not and they do not.

The Green Party and the members on this side are committed to taking whatever actions we can to end this inequality, and I thank others in this House tonight who put justice and equality first. Kia ora.

A party vote was called for on the question that the Equal Pay Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

While the Clerk is doing some adding, I want to both remind my colleagues on my left not to interject while votes are being taken and also ask my old classmate to refrain even from supportive interjections during those periods.